"That's too much pressure for this early in the morning."
"I'll try to moderate my adoration after breakfast."
"See that you do."
But she was smiling, and so was he, and when she reached up to pull him down for a kiss, Sebastian thought that he had finally found what he had been searching for his entire life.
Not just love, though there was that. Not just partnership, though there was that too.
Home. He had found home.
And home, it turned out, was not a place at all. It was a person. It was Harriet, sharp-tongued, stubborn, brilliant Harriet who had somehow seen past his defences and chosen to love him anyway.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked, when they broke apart.
"How lucky I am."
"Luck had nothing to do with it. You were annoyingly persistent."
"Seven years of persistent. You'd think I would have given up."
"I'm glad you didn't."
"So am I."
***
The ballroom was too hot, too bright, and too full of people who had opinions about Harriet's womb.
She stood beside Sebastian near the refreshment table, a glass of tepid lemonade in her hand, her smile fixed in place like a mask she had worn so many times it had begun to feel like her actual face. The Countess of Riverton's spring ball was the eventof the Season, everyone who was anyone had come, dressed in their finest, ready to see and be seen.
Harriet would rather have been anywhere else on earth.
"You're grinding your teeth," Sebastian murmured, his voice low enough that only she could hear.
"I am not."
"You are. I can see the muscle in your jaw jumping."
"That's concentration. I'm concentrating on not throwing this lemonade in Lady Davies's face."
Sebastian followed her gaze across the room to where Lady Davies, the former Miss Arabella Sinclair, now wedded to Lord Davies for eighteen months and mother to an infant son was holding court among a circle of admirers. She was pretty in a pale, insipid way, with watery blue eyes and a smile that never quite reached them. She was also, as Harriet had discovered over the past year, possessed of a tongue as sharp as any blade.
"She's not worth the waste of good lemonade," Sebastian said.
"It's not good lemonade. It's barely adequate lemonade."
"Then she's not worth the waste of barely adequate lemonade."
Harriet almost smiled. Almost. But the evening had worn her thin, and the smile wouldn't quite form.
Two years of devoted affection and matrimony should have sufficed, and yet…every ball, every dinner party, every social gathering came with the same unspoken question hanging in the air:Why no children?
Some people asked directly, with the particular lack of tact that the aristocracy seemed to cultivate.Any happy news yet? Surely by now there should be an heir on the way. Lord Vane must be eager for a son.
Others were more subtle, their questions wrapped in concern and pity.Are you quite well, Lady Vane? You look tired.Perhaps you should rest more. I know of an excellent physician who specializes in... delicate matters.
And then there were the ones like Lady Davies, who didn't ask at all but simply smiled with that knowing, pitying expression that made Harriet want to commit violence.
